Tommy Lee Jones was beaten out for poster billing by two kids and a dog.

Insidious 2 was the big winner over the weekend, “scaring up” (see what I did there?) an estimated $41 million over the Friday the 13th weekend, more than three times bigger than the original’s $13.3 million. That made it the second biggest September opening ever, behind the Adam Sandler-voiced Hotel Transylvania, which should tell you everything you need to know about how slow and boring box office news is in September.

Insidious 2 was the fifth horror movie to open number one this year, and the second directed by James Wan and starring Patrick Wilson (the first being The Conjuring). Horror fans love a formula.

Elsewhere, Robert Deniro’s latest paycheck, The Family, didn’t bomb quite as hard as it should have even though no one really liked it:

In a distant second place, The Family opened to an estimated $14.5 million from 3,091 theaters. That’s a solid start for the mob comedy—it ranks second all-time for director Luc Besson, and sixth all-time for distributor Relativity Media. Its audience was 54 percent female and 83 percent over the age of 25; unfortunately, it received a terrible “C” CinemaScore, which suggests it will fall pretty quickly. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Well, at least it probably won’t make its money back. That “83 percent over the age of 25” stat really says it all. For the over-25 crowd, Deniro is still the guy from Raging Bull and The Godfather. For the younger people, he’s the co-star of bad rom-coms who gets stabbed in the boner. RIP.

They were correcting my original post, which said both of James Wans movies this year starred Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, but the Conjuring was Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, so I corrected the post, removing the Rose Byrne line. Yay!

Vince why do you hate on horror so much? Not trolling, genuinely curious. Every genre has a “formula” and has both great and terrible examples of it. I was just wondering why horror seems to get more flak about it than other genres.

I don’t hate it. I was open about liking The Conjuring. (Though I confess I much prefer a film that doesn’t conform to a particular genre). Yes, every genre has a formula, but find me another genre that releases two films in the same year with the same director and star that are both basically about haunted houses. Horror may not be worse, but come on, you have to admit that it’s probably more formulaic.

I definitely agree that horror is more reliant on tropes and formula than some genres but I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing unto itself. It’s a strength in that the limitations of the genre force a very obvious dichotomy between shitty (any Texas Chainsaw flick) and excellent (Ti West’s House of the Devil). But I do see your point about the sameness being a weakness. Wan knows how to make a Haunted house movie but its not his framing device that’s important, it’s how he plays with expectations, atmosphere, and tension. I appreciate Wan because those things are clearly important to him and he’d rather play with your emotions than take the ElI Roth brute-force approach. There is both comfort and boredom in the familiarity of formula, I think it just depends on how well you balance that as you hit your notes. Much like kung-fu in that regard.

And honestly, who doesn’t love Friday the 13th? The thing is Vince, I’m not referring to the lame SPOOKY HOUSE type horror movies, I just remember something you said a while ago about not understanding why horror works and I just love stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. I mean, I just don’t understand how you could not be into those.